


The one with repudiable defensibility

by 4eyeCrossed



Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempt at Humor, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27883049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4eyeCrossed/pseuds/4eyeCrossed
Summary: "This is the literal most perfect plan I’ve ever thought of.”  Joey crossed his arms and shuffled his feet a bit and mumbled, “I thought you’d be proud of me, y’know?”Having a feeling he’d missed some nuance of Joey’s plan (and, whoa, there was something he never thought he’d have), Chandler prodded, “Proud of you for… tossing aside your scruples in the desperate scramble to cater to the ever-changing whims of the masses on social media?”“No!  For comin’ up with a way that you could have a shot with me and I could decide if I wanna have a shot with you and if it works out, that’s cool, and if it doesn’t, we go back to normal and have repudiable defensibility with our friends.”“Okay, what, what, and—quick follow-up—what?”
Relationships: Chandler Bing & Joey Tribbiani, Chandler Bing/Joey Tribbiani
Comments: 8
Kudos: 70





	The one with repudiable defensibility

“…and that about covers the witchcraft required to populate a column using data from another sheet. You probably won’t have the advantage of being gawked at by my roommate but, hey, that’s your problem.”

Chandler paused, tried to think of a pithy signoff, came up empty because why would he suddenly come up with the thing that he’d been desperately seeking for the past five years, and shut off the recording. People watched this crap to attain basic computer software skills, not be awed by their virtual tutor’s goodness at word-making.

He pulled his headset down around his neck and spared a look in his roommate’s direction before saving the file and starting the upload to his account. “Did you want something?”

Joey grinned (Chandler didn’t have to look up again to know that he was grinning.) and said, “Yeah, I—”

“Still a no, Joseph.”

Joey pouted (Chandler didn’t have to look to know this either.) and whined, “But why not?”

“Because it’s deceitful and morally questionable and I don’t wanna.”

“But you don’t even gotta do anything.” At the quick glare shot in his direction, Joey amended, “Much.”

“Tempting as it is to not do much of anything, Joe, I already get enough of that with the whole posting-internet-videos-as-a-career thing.”

“But think of the hearts!” Joey waved around his smartphone—that _thing_ that filmed all his stuff for Vine or TikTok or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever-the-hell-it-was that he happened to be into this week—in Chandler’s peripheral vision.

“I am thinking of hearts—one hearts—heart—mine!” Chandler took a break from arguing with his laptop to frown at Joey. “Wow, that came out way more emotionally vulnerable than it was supposed to, but you get the point.”

“Yeah, Phoebs told me.”

“Good. End of discussion.” Chandler turned his scowl back to the Upload screen. He was damn sure the process got slower with every browser update. A few blinks later, he echoed, “Phoebe told you?”

“Yeah.”

“Told you what?”

“That you have a crush on me.”

This was the part where Chandler was supposed to flail around wildly and denydenydeny until he was blue in the face, but abject terror trumped blind panic and he ended up frozen on the barstool.

“Chandler?”

Chandler made a noise that he hoped was more similar to a grunt than a whine, but the blood rushing in his ears made it difficult to distinguish.

Joey sighed pityingly—and, yes, he could hear that over his rushing blood because _Joey of all people fucking Joey_ was questioning his intelligence. “You’d know that I knew that if you watched your friends’ content, dude.”

And there was the flail. And then the traditional knocking-his-laptop-off-the-counter and the usual whacking-his-shin-into-the-corner-of-the-peninsula and the novel component of his yelling, “Ow, my freaking—THE INTERNET KNOWS—owwie-ow-ow?”

Joey had the nerve to roll his eyes. “Chill, man, Rachel told her to censor your name out for the video.”

“Rachel?”

“Yeah, we were at the girls’ apartment and Rach helped out with filming.”

Chandler hobbled around the peninsula to check on the state of his laptop. “So you and Phoebe and Rachel…?”

“Yeah, and Monica was testing out a new recipe on Ross in the kitchen.”

Chandler plunked down on the kitchen tiles and dropped his forehead to rest on the cabinet. “So you left me with nobody. Thanks.”

“No problemo.”

Chandler sighed and detached his forehead from the cabinet door and checked his laptop and saw the Upload progress still ticking along at a nauseatingly slow rate and realized that he still hadn’t gotten to the very important task of denydenydenying and started, “For the record—”

“Now that you know I know and they know and ‘the internet’ kinda-sorta knows, d’you think you wanna… y’know?”

Chandler very slowly stood up and placed his laptop back on its perch and hopped back around to his barstool.

“Chandler?”

“I’m ignoring you.”

“But it’d be perfect! You get the man of your dreams—”

“Paranoid delusions,” Chandler muttered.

“—and I get a popularity boost and we all live happily ever after!”

“Dude, I am _not_ fake-dating you to up your following!”

“’Course not.” The dark eyebrows waggled. “You’d be ‘upping’ other things. Fakily, I mean.”

Chandler pressed his lips together to contain the declaration that “fakily” was not a word, since he had bigger fish to fry than grammatical sardines. He took a moment to congratulate himself on being able to prioritize in this manner, then took on the bluefin tuna in the room: “Seriously, Joe, you wouldn’t feel bad for lying to your followers?”

“’Course I would! That’s why this is the literal most perfect plan I’ve ever thought of.” Joey crossed his arms and shuffled his feet a bit and mumbled, “I thought you’d be proud of me, y’know?”

Having a feeling he’d missed some nuance of Joey’s plan (and, whoa, there was something he never thought he’d have), Chandler prodded, “Proud of you for… tossing aside your scruples in the desperate scramble to cater to the ever-changing whims of the masses on social media?”

“No! For comin’ up with a way that you could have a shot with me and I could decide if I wanna have a shot with you and if it works out, that’s cool, and if it doesn’t, we go back to normal and have repudiable defensibility with our friends.”

“Okay, what, what, and—quick follow-up— _what_?”

“Repudiable defensibility,” Joey said, looking far too smug for someone who was strongly pushing a plan that involved his dating Chandler. “Y’know, where people think you did somethin’ but they can’t prove it.”

“That’s plausible deniability.”

“What’d I say?”

“Not that.”

“Can ya prove it?”

Chandler tried not to feel proud that, even if he screwed up the phrase, Joey actually seemed to get the concept. Then he gave up and grinned, “Not bad, Joseph.”

Joey grinned back. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’re goin’ out with me, yeah?”

“Yeah— _wait_!” he ended in a yelp, but Joey was already halfway to the door and hollering, “No takebacks!”

“You can’t—ow, my fricking—” Chandler limped a few steps after his flailing to get off the barstool resulted in a reunion between his shin and the corner of the peninsula, then found that hopping on one leg was marginally less inefficient in following Joey out of the apartment and across the hall. “You can’t say ‘no takebacks’ after you’ve already conned me into saying the thing you wanted me to say!”

* * *

“He said yes!” Joey’s voice hollered, accompanied by the sound of the door being flung open so hard the knob banged into the wall, and the soufflé went souf-flat.

Monica tried not to cry as she watched the horror unfold in slow motion, then snapped her gaze up as she was crushed in a bear hug and spun around with Joey all but singing, “Chandler’s goin’ out with me!”

“I am not!” wobbled in somewhere from the background, and Monica was almost impressed by how much Joey’s rapid rotations distorted Chandler’s voice. That, or Chandler was so distraught that his voice was doing weird things on its own. Either cause seemed equally likely.

“No takebacks!” Joey whooped.

“You killed my bake!” Monica shrieked as a dip in Joey’s spinning granted her a fleeting view of the disaster.

“He’s killing my dreams of a peaceful existence on this planet and now I know that the only freedom lies in the arms of sweet merciful death—kill me now!”

“Ooh, cake!” Joey stopped spinning Monica abruptly and used a mixing spoon to stab into the pan and stuff some in his mouth. He grinned while still chewing, “’S’hot bu’ ‘s’great, Mon.”

Monica staggered back into the refrigerator from her sudden release but still managed to put all her soul and most of her teeth into seething, “It is not a cake, you heathen, it’s a soufflé.”

Joey frowned down at the pan. “Looks like a cake to me. Kinda flat for a—”

“ _That’s your fault_.”

“Oh.” Joey looked guilty for a moment but then licked the spoon and grinned again. “Still good. It’d make a good layer for cheesecake brownies or somethin’.”

Monica scowled a moment longer, realized that she still had a livestream audience to appear mature in front of, and sighed. She opened the fridge and started scrounging around for assorted soft cheeses. “Well, guys, when life gives you lemons….” She turned and dropped the ricotta and cream cheese and whole milk onto the counter in front of the camera. “…make cheesecake.”

“Yeah, lemon cheesecake sounds amazing,” Joey said in an awestruck tone and Monica pretended that wasn’t why she added a lemon to her collection of ingredients.

“Get out of the shot!” Chandler yelled from as far outside the frame as he could manage while staying on the same side of the apartment. “I don’t want video evidence of this!”

“Ooh, Chandler, gettin’ frisky before the first date?”

“We are not dating! Dating is not a thing we do to each other!”

“Not ‘til tomorrow, anyway.”

“N—tomorrow?!”

“For Pete’s sake, honey,” Monica sighed, glancing at the friend awkwardly plastering himself to the wall in an exaggerated effort to keep his likeness off-camera, “it’s just one date. You’re already practically married.”

“Yeah!” Joey chimed in, about to steal another piece of failed soufflé before Monica snatched the mixing spoon out of his hand and smacked him in the stomach with it.

“You can just go to a Rangers game and eat pizza and fall asleep cuddling in front of the TV.” She waved the spoon around. “You know: your regular Saturday.”

“Yeah!”

“You shut up!” Chandler said, arm waving up and down along the wall in something that was probably supposed to be a finger-wag at Joey. “You aren’t helping!” he added, arm now flailing in some gesture that Monica really had no idea how to interpret, but he was looking at her as he did it so she assumed it was some attempt to communicate with her.

“Welp—” Joey gave a loud clap. “—the perfect first date won’t plan itself.” He all but strutted out of the girls’ apartment, assuring Chandler along the way that, “I’ll leave some room in the sched’ for gettin’ frisky,” and calling back to the cooking guru, “Lemme know when the cheesecake’s done, Mon!”

“Don’t say _sched’_! And there’s no date to sched’! And I don’t do ‘frisky’ on the first date!” Chandler, still plastered to the wall, snapped at his retreating roommate.

“Second date?” Joey paused in the hallway to ask.

“There’s not—we aren’t— _no!_ ”

“Geez, Bing, how long are you gonna make me wait?” Joey snorted, completing his retreat to the boys’ apartment without waiting for a reply.

Chandler scowled at the door, glanced with all the world’s suspicion toward Monica’s camera, and repeated that indecipherable flailing thing he’d done earlier. “Edit this out!”

“It’s a livestream, honey.” Monica scrolled through some of the viewers’ chat. “They’re saying this is hilarious and adorable and congratulations.”

“Shit, they’re laughing at me!”

“Language, honey. They can still hear you.”

The enraged pink of Chandler’s face drained to white. Once he tamped down the panic enough to make words happen, he whisper-yelled, “Wait, so they—you mean I—they— _they_ all heard my—my—my—me?”

“Oh, yeah.” Monica propped her tablet with the ongoing chat back against its stand. “They heard _so_ much of your you.”

“This isn’t funny,” he hissed.

“Am I laughing?”

“You are laughing inside your head because you want everyone to think you’re all sweet-angel-cooking-lady but really you’re evil so just stab me with a fondue fork and put me out of my misery!”

Monica glanced at the sound levels on her equipment. “They can still hear you.”

Chandler clamped one hand over his mouth and turned around, nose grazing the wall as he sidled toward the door.

“Everything past the last cabinet is out of frame,” Monica offered helpfully and he turned around to give her angry eyebrows before trying to stomp out, realizing his shin still hurt like hell, almost collapsing, shooting angry eyebrows at her again, and then hopping out of the apartment with his mouth still covered.

“Close the door, honey.”

A hand flailed back into view, latched onto the doorknob, and slammed shut. There were a few bumps and thumps from beyond the door, but Monica decided that they were probably nothing life-threatening and went back to her cheesecake.

* * *

Rachel groaned and rubbed the elbow she’d fallen back on. Happy as she was that it had been the joint rather than the skull that had fought a losing battle with the floor, the joy paled in comparison to the prospect of having a day without impromptu bodychecks. Hence her rather grumpy tone as she demanded, “What the actual hell, Chandler?”

Chandler (of What-the-Actual-Hell fame) stayed where he’d fallen from their collision in the corridor, both hands covering his face as he lay there, spreadeagle.

“Chandler!”

“Kill me. Just seal me in a crate and drop me down an elevator shaft.”

Rachel rolled her eyes and regained her feet. “Jesus, you’re such a drama queen.”

Chandler shot upright to protest, “I am not a queen—o-or a drama queen—and why does everybody know—know—think I have a crush on—on—oh my god, the internet knows my name! My life is over!”

“You don’t have a life.”

Chandler opened his mouth before pursing it shut. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now peel yourself off the floor and let’s talk about whatever existential crisis you’ve got going _this_ week.” She started toward her apartment door and narrowly avoided screaming when a hand halted her progress by grabbing her ankle. “Holy _shhh_ — _don’t_ grab people like that!”

“We can’t go in there,” he whispered loudly. “Monica’s doing a livestream.”

Rachel whispered loudly in return, “Then we’ll be quiet and walk around her setup to talk in my room. Get off me.” She shook her leg and Chandler relinquished his grip.

* * *

Rachel opened the door to her room and stood inside to wait for her unexpected guest to follow suit. When he simply stood in the doorway, eyeing her usual camera setup in the far corner of her bedroom, she rolled her own eyes and grabbed him by the hand and yanked him in and nudged the door shut.

“I swear to god, Chandler, it’s like you have an actual phobia or something. Do you really think I’d keep the camera rolling while I was out the whole afternoon?”

“They do it with baby zoo animals.”

“I don’t think scarves have quite the same draw. Although that is the kind of thing I might watch if I need to calm down.” Rachel thought about this, then realized Chandler was eyeing her in a way that clearly suggested this constantly-running-cameras idea would end up with his locking himself in his bedroom forever rather than ever seeing her again.

She shook her head with a reassuring smile, then kicked off her shoes and plopped onto her bed cross-legged as Chandler wandered over to her filming corner to have a look at the scarves she’d gotten from high-end shops and big-box stores and thrift stores for a video comparison. “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing. Just that all my friends knnn— _think_ I’ve got the hots for my roommate and my roommate just word-vomited my real name out on a livestream with at least two thousand viewers and I apparently just agreed to con said roommate’s followers into thinking we’re an item.”

Rachel blinked several times and decided to work backwards on this. “How’d you agree to that?”

“Cruel connivance and torturesome trickery.”

“Whose trickery?”

“Joe’s.”

“Joey?”

“Hm?” Chandler flicked through a few of the scarves on the rack before taking a red one to toss around his shoulders.

“ _Joey_ tricked you?”

“Have I asked you yet to chain me to an anvil and roll me into the Hudson? Because that would be so very much appreciated.” He tossed one end of the scarf over his shoulder, posed like he’d seen some random model do in some random magazine that had been fruitlessly trying to sell him Christmas gift ideas since Halloween, and tilted his head.

“You’d look better in the indigo,” Rachel supplied, so he replaced the red scarf and donned the deep indigo stretch of fabric, promptly wrapping it about his neck and holding up one end to mime being hanged. “I worry when you start making too many ‘death to Chandler’ jokes. You realize that, don’t you?”

“How many is too many?” Chandler deflected, tying the scarf into a comedically oversized bowtie before turning to flop back onto the bed, head landing next to one of Rachel’s knees.

“I’ve been home less than five minutes and you’ve already made three.”

“Ah, yes. Far in excess of the golden ratio of five minutes per two jokes. My apologies.”

She swatted at his shoulder. “I mean it, dork. Anyway, why’s it so bad that we nuh-think you have a thing for Joey?”

“Really, Rach?” Chandler propped himself up on his elbows. “Really?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Because it’s Joey. And me. It’s me and Joey!” As Rachel was busy rolling her eyes, he realized, “So you really kn—think—think it’s a thing? That I’ve got a thing? For Mr. Sandwich?”

“Duh. And it doesn’t exactly help that you keep half-admitting it every five seconds.” She jumped when Chandler was suddenly grabbing her shoulders.

“I’m not! Because I don’t!”

“How are you just having a meltdown now? Phoebe posted that video two weeks ago.”

Chandler’s mouth moved as if he was yelling, but actual sounds did not occur. Instead, he released Rachel and flopped over so his head was hanging off the edge of the bed.

“Um,” was the best Rachel could come up with for this turn of events.

“Am I allowed to make another Chandler-death joke yet?” came from over the edge of the bed. “Oh, please, let me make another Chandler-death joke.”

Rachel exhaled as a knock sounded at her bedroom door. “The cavalry arrives,” she breathed, then called, “Yes?”

“You guys decent in there?” Monica’s voice returned.

“It’s me and Chandler.”

“Oh. Duh.”

Chandler lifted his head to glare at Rachel and then at Monica as she came in. “I feel like I should be insulted.”

“For being a respectful friend?” Rachel smiled disarmingly and Chandler’s disgruntlement disintegrated.

“And also probably not being straight and having a thing for your roommate,” Monica said flatly and Chandler’s disintegrated disgruntlement flew into a flail that spun into somersault that landed him on the floor.

“I don’t have a thing for my roommate!” He jumped to his feet and got a wrist caught in one of the loops of the scarf bowtie. “And I’m not gay—probably—most of the time—I mean like what it meant in the old days—don’t try to distract me!”

Monica held up her hands. “I’m not trying to distract you. I’m just saying—”

“Don’t just say!” Chandler struggled with his wrist becoming increasingly tangled in the loop. “Stop saying!”

“—that you seem like you date girls out of obligation more than enjoyment, and maybe you’d be less of an anxiety-ridden disaster-ball of a human being if you came out. _If_ there’s anything for you to come out about.”

Chandler stilled and watched as Monica lowered her hands. Then he eyed his own hand that had somehow gotten tied to his forehead by the scarf. He sighed. “This is a metaphor for something, isn’t it?”

* * *

A low grumbling sound drew Ross’s attention and he turned to find Chandler standing just inside Central Perk, glowering at Phoebe.

“Hey, man,” Ross greeted him in an unsuccessful bid to shoo away the shroud of darkness hanging over his old friend, and Chandler shot something that might have qualified in some Bizarro universe as a smile in his direction before heading over to the counter and asking for a double espresso.

“Caffeine makes you anxious,” Phoebe reminded him.

“Already there, Buffay.”

Phoebe grinned. “Ooh, last name. I feel like one of the guys!”

Ross leaned in to whisper, “I think he’s mad at you,” just in case she hadn’t caught onto that.

“I know,” she said at normal volume, “but it’s hard for someone to stay mad at me when I keep smiling at them.”

“Nevertheless,” Chandler intoned dryly, sitting at the opposite end of the sofa to wait for his drink, “he persisted.” He very pointedly looked at Ross and said, “Would you kindly tell that blond stranger next to me that smiling at someone doesn’t work if the someone isn’t looking at h— _oh my god_!”

“You would’ve seen me coming if you were looking at me,” Phoebe, sitting in Chandler’s lap and smiling barely two inches from his face, declared.

After several false starts, Chandler finally managed to make words happen. “I am not happy,” were the words that happened, and they weren’t his first choice but why break his record and have something work out for him today?

“Aw, but you’re my friend and I love you!” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders in a hug.

Chandler sighed. “I forgive you.”

“That’s great!” She shuffled off his lap and gave him a shove. “Because I’m mad at you!”

“Wha—”

“You didn’t even watch the episode where I tell Joey’s fortune. What kind of friend are you, Chandler Bing?”

Chandler huffed another sigh. “I have five friends sprawled across ten social media platforms. I can’t watch everybody’s everything.”

Phoebe harrumphed and turned away with her arms crossed.

“I watch all of your horoscope videos,” he offered and she turned around just enough to side-eye him. He forced a smile.

“You do leave some pretty cute comments,” she mused. “And your awkward nerd smile does reach into the cold dead cockles of my heart and give them warm fuzzies.” Phoebe grinned and hugged him again. “Aw, I can’t stay mad at you. Ross is the one we should be mad at, anyway.”

Chandler drew back from the embrace. “Why are we mad at Ross?”

“He—”

“We aren’t mad at Ross,” Ross cut in. “Nobody’s mad at Ross. Ross is a good friend and tries to make other friends happy by being a good friend.”

Phoebe and Chandler stared at him for several moments before Phoebe pointed and said, “He told me.”

“ _GELLER!_ ”

The barista with Chandler’s espresso was halfway to the sofa when everyone had to batten down the hatches to avoid being sucked out the door as Ross bolted and Chandler flew after him.

Phoebe took Chandler’s espresso and said, “I don’t think he needs this anymore. Oh, but could you put this in a to-go cup? My _Dionaea muscipula_ ’s been a little floppy lately.”

* * *

“Wow, this has been a real interesting day for you, huh?”

Chandler didn’t know how to reply to that without completely alienating Phoebe for the rest of eternity (or at least the day), so he put all his energy into trying to stand again and _ow_!

Phoebe took a sip from her to-go cup and glanced back at the café less than half a block behind. “Didn’t get very far, did’ja?”

Chandler didn’t know how to reply to that without yelling at the ice patch he’d slipped on or clawing out Ross’s eyeballs for having somehow dodged the ice patch while leaving Chandler to have it all to himself, so he put all his energy into flailing away from the helpful hand that Ross was now offering.

“Don’t touch me! You’re dead to me! I’m not letting a corpse feel me up!”

Phoebe took another sip. “How about a sexy blonde?”

Chandler stared blankly at Phoebe until she pointed to herself. “Oh. Thanks, Phoebs.”

“I was gonna do that,” Ross commented as Phoebe let Chandler latch onto her arm to pull himself up.

“Did you hear something, Phoebe?” Chandler, standing on one leg, looked around theatrically. “Could the wind _be_ anymore nasal and pedantic today?”

“Oh, come on!” Ross blurted. “I was trying to help!”

“By blabbing about the literal only thing I’ve ever told you to never tell a living soul about?”

“Yes!”

Phoebe glanced between Chandler’s dark countenance and Ross’s hopeful one. She finally informed the latter, “I don’t think that answer is doing the thing you want it to do.”

“But how else was I supposed to help? I told Chandler to just go for it but he said he wouldn’t and I don’t know how to get a guy to ask another guy on a date so we were kinda at a stalemate and the only way to get anything moving was to get someone else involved!”

“I didn’t go to you for help!” Chandler cut into the rant that Ross was for some reason directing at Phoebe. “I went to you for pity!”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Phoebe chimed in, “I think you’re pretty pitiful right now.”

Chandler blinked rapidly. “No. No, it doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Okay. I still think you’re pitiful.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

“I could give you a piggyback ride up the stairs,” Ross said and automatically flinched back, but Chandler was still gazing uncertainly up the staircase instead of glaring daggers at the taller man.

Chandler braced one hand against the wall and tried to hop onto the first step, landing on the edge and wobbling perilously before gaining his balance.

“Come on, man, you’re gonna hurt yourself!”

“Encroaching on your territory, am I?” Chandler snapped, eyes locked on the next step.

Phoebe sipped at the espresso and said, “It took fifteen minutes for you to get into the building. Let the corpse give you a piggyback so you can get home before the end of the century.”

“I can do— _shit_!”

Ross pushed back on Chandler’s shoulder until he was no longer leaning back at a forty-five-degree angle. “See? You need help! I can help!”

“I’m not letting you carry me! You always get the latest phone.”

Phoebe cocked her head and Ross said, “What’s that supposed to mean?” in a tone that suggested he already knew what it was supposed to mean and was just setting himself up for an insult at this point.

“You always get the new phones because you drop the old ones! If I can’t trust you with that—” Chandler waved in an apparent effort to indicate the phone in Ross’s pocket. “—how can I trust you with this?” He waved his arm up and down in front of his torso.

“What if Ross and I both carried you?”

Chandler glanced skeptically between the pair now making an unconvincing effort to look competent. “What if you both left me alone and I lived at the bottom of the staircase until my ankle can support weight again? I like that plan.”

Phoebe shoved the to-go cup into Chandler’s non-wall-holding-up hand and told Ross, “Grab his legs. I’ll get the top part.”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa-wait-whoa—I do not consent!”

Given that he had one free arm and one decent leg, Chandler’s lack of consent wasn’t enough for him to escape from Ross hooking his elbows under his knees and Phoebe wrapping her arms under his armpits.

They’d made it up three steps, Chandler being toted along feet-first with his head about two steps below with Phoebe, when the cargo whimpered, “Ohhhh, I do not like this….”

“Well, if you didn’t freak out on me, we wouldn’t be in this position,” Ross returned in his most nasal and pedantic voice as they continued making progress, “now would we?”

“How am I not supposed to freak? You told Phoebe!”

“I only told her that I _thought_ you had a thing for Joey. It’s not like I told her that you _told_ me you had a thing for Joey.”

Phoebe, bringing up the rear (or, at least, the top part), stopped stair-climbing and gasped loudly. “So it’s confirmed? This is great!” She threw her hands into the air in celebration and then things got less great.

* * *

“Ouch.”

“Ouch? _You_ are saying _‘ouch’_?”

“Just because my _‘ouch’_ isn’t as big as your _‘ouch’_ , that doesn’t mean I can’t _‘ouch’_ at all.” Phoebe leaned her head way back to look upside-down at Monica and Rachel putting dinner together. “Right, girlfriends? Up top!” She mimed giving them a high-five and returned to her previous slouching posture on the couch, contemplating the cute nail art she could do to incorporate her damaged thumbnail.

Ross rolled his eyes, gaze landing on some decorative spindly thing sticking out of the floral arrangement on his sister’s coffee table. He wondered if he could use that to stick into his cast and scratch that part of his wrist that had been itching for the past hour, decided that that sort of thing never ended well, and continued bickering with Phoebe to distract himself.

“You coulda just said no.”

Chandler slowly turned his head to look at Joey, perched on the arm of the armchair the former had been installed in. “No to what?”

“Datin’ me.”

“I said no,” Chandler said in a measured tone, since that was the only tone he could use if he didn’t want to let the stupid concussion-thing make him nauseous. “I said no multiple times at varying volumes and none of them seemed to work.”

Joey looked away. “You said yes before you said no. Then I figured you were just being panicky and flaily like you always get when anything new happens.” He scuffed his foot along the floor. “We coulda talked about it if you came back home. You didn’t hafta go busting yourself up.”

Chandler repressed the urge to roll his eyes since the last time he’d done that today, he’d ended up with a headache. “I didn’t slip on a patch of ice and get dropped down the stairs just to get out of a date with you, Joe.”

Joey nodded, face betraying a lack of having been convinced.

“C’mon, man. Do you really think I’d break an ankle and sustain a concussion, rather than go out with you?”

Joey stared at him and considered this question long enough that Chandler took a deep breath and decided to plow on with, “Did you still want to… y’know?”

Joey’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Still want to… stick my nose in your hair?”

Chandler blinked. “What?”

“What?”

“Why?”

“You still smell like coffee.”

Chandler clamped his lips together to keep from rolling his eyes.

“Well, then what were you askin’ about?"

“I was asking if you still wanted to do the dating thing, but if you’re just gonna keep reminding me of my adventure with a cup of espresso down the staircase, maybe I don’t—”

“ _Oh_ , the dating thing!” Joey exclaimed, loudly enough that it got everyone else’s attention. Chandler didn’t wave his arms fast enough or _“shush!”_ emphatically enough for Joey to get the message about volume control, so the latter continued in an outdoor voice, “Yeah, let’s do that!”

Chandler closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, might as well scream it from the rooftops now, while I still have repudiable defensibility from having a concussion.”

“Sweet!”

“Just don’t post any pictures of me,” Chandler called after Joey, eyes still shut as the latter ambled off to put together some sort of announcement for his followers. “And don’t mention my name… again.”

“Can I tell ‘em your hair smells like coffee?”

“Go for it.”

Chandler opened his eyes again, finding everybody but Joey (happily poking at his phone by the windows) grinning at him. He tried to think of a pithy coming-out joke, came up empty because he couldn’t manage to be so casual about the thing he’d spent most of the past fifteen years trying to repress, and managed to return a small version of their grins with a slight shake of his head.

“I’ve got it!” Phoebe burst out. “I can paint all the good nails with little dinosaurs and the wonky one with little broken dino-eggshells. Ooh—maybe I can let you guys each do a dinosaur. Fun!”

She clapped her hands and Ross started off on all the types of dinosaurs they could portray and Chandler rested back in the armchair. For now, at least, he could be a relaxed disaster-ball of a human being.


End file.
